The Surefire Way To Suck At Snowboarding (And What To Do Instead)

So here’s the honest truth, when you first strap onto your snowboard, you’re going to suck.

You’ll catch edges, hit your head, sprain wrists, bruise your butt and you’ll push yourself until you finally see some results only to suddenly get stuck and feel like you’re not making any progress while you smash your body over and over.

People WILL look at you when you fall. You’re going to fall over and over and you’ll almost always have people watching while you faceplant and crash trying the most basic techniques that the 12 year olds next to you are executing flawlessly.

So what?

The surefire way to suck at snowboarding (and how to beat it)

You know how you can instantly screw over your snowboard progression and suck at snowboarding? Get angry. Get annoyed. Get frustrated. And finally, let that anger and frustration get to you.

Know what? Everyone gets frustrated and everyone gets annoyed when they can’t seem to get a new trick or technique to click. That’s not a good reason or excuse to let it get to you.

You want fast snowboard progression? Get over being frustrated and annoyed and use your failure as fuel.

Guess what a good snowboarder is thinking when he crashes on a new trick? Sure he gets angry and annoyed and even frustrated, but he’s also thinking, “I don’t care if I have to try this 500 times, I WILL figure this out.”

That’s drive. That’s something you can’t fake and it’s something that comes by just looking at each crash and obstacle as a chance to better your snowboarding and push through until you get it right.

Drive is what allows snowboarders to look at new obstacles that scare the crap out of them and somehow keep going. It’s what makes an average snowboarder into an amazing snowboarder.

You know who’s riding that 1 chairlift all day and thinking about that one trick the entire time? The driven snowboarder who’s going to work his way to stomping that trick.

Drive is how skiers and snowboarders do things like this:

The bottom line

You don’t have to have drive. However, if you don’t have that burning drive to stomp the crap out of that trick that keeps beating you, I can already tell you that you’re going to become an average snowboarder.

Personally, I hate settling for average. Average isn’t stomping all those tricks you want to learn. Average isn’t riding everything on the mountain. Average certainly isn’t what you dreamt about when you bought your first snowboard.

Drive comes from your love and passion for snowboarding. It comes from not wanting to let some snowboard trick beat you and it comes from that amazing feeling you get when you finally stomp a trick that’s been kicking your butt.

Whatever it is that makes you love snowboarding, that’s your drive and that’s what you need to use every time you find an obstacle or challenge that’s beating you.

Find your drive in snowboarding and you’ll have found your path to becoming an amazing snowboarder.

- Jed

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